kemisan

one most important point of learning is willingness to learn new things (tools, methods, approaches, literatures, etc. you name it). from my own experience, this is easy to say but much harder to do. reluctance is always there; ‘status quo’ is always in the way. so, real determination is needed ..

bang gindo tampubolon supervises mas jarwo’s PhD. below is the conversation between them that i hope would be of some use, not only technically (i.e. about social network mapping) but more importantly that it shares an experience of willingness to learn new things.

thanks to mas jarwo and bang gindo for the permission to share this ‘conversation’

bang gindo says (full version here):

Beberapa gagasan untuk menyelesaikan esai ketiga dalam tesis Mas Jarwo. Desentralisasi Indonesia pada pergantian abad ini pada hakikatnya adalah keputusan politik. Esai ini semata-mata mengurusi pertanyaan politik, ekonomi dan administrasi yang mengalir dari tindakan desentralisasi ini. Model-model layanan e-Government akan menimbang berbagai faktor yang paling menentukan atau mendorong pemberian layanan masyarakat secara on line. Analisa jaringan atas situs-situs semua pemerintah daerah Indonesia akan menunjukkan apakah jaringan komunikasi dan kelembagaan pemerintah daerah sesudah desentralisasi masih didominasi oleh pemerintah pusat; ataukah ada kecenderungan penyetaraan mengimbangi pemusatan selama ini. Analisa ini semua mensyaratkan angket langganan berkala dan akan dimudahkan dengan penggunaan robot web seperti issuecrawler dari govcom.org.

mas jarwo replies (full reply here):

One part of my PhD thesis have purpose to identify, to represent, and to visualize local government networks within the context of decentralization and electronic government development in Indonesia. I realizes this is an interesting research topic because it correspond at least to four recent issues on Public Administration: decentralization, policy networks, governance or network management, and information technology development in public organization. Latter, I will explain this on my third essay plan.

In this essay, social network analysis will be used to seek answer related to the pattern of local government networks, how and the dynamic of it, and to what extent it change in the contexts decentralization and electronic government policy in Indonesia. In order to avoid problem related to generalization, this research use all local governments which have web site address as research sample. I found 402 local governments that already launched their web site address from total 433 local governments in Indonesia.

Of course it is impossible if I do this by manual, and therefore robot web, Issue Crawler and Pajek, is needed to mapping the networks structure of those local governments. Both software are available freely for academic use from its authors’ site.

As generally beginner, at first time I looks those tools is complicated, but after learning and understanding it, I felt that those are really exciting and powerful for analyzing various social networks via online. I realized that this new knowledge which is important for me as a stepping stone for doing my PhD thesis.

i hope you all enjoy (and learn from) it.